Web services provide a standardized way of integrating web-based applications using eXtensible Markup Language (XML), SOAP, Web Services Description Language (WSDL), and/or Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) standards over an Internet Protocol (IP) backbone. XML can be used to tag data used by a web service, SOAP can be used to transfer the data, WSDL can be used for describing the web services available and UDDI can be used for listing the available web services. Web services allow different applications located at different sources to communicate with each other efficiently and without custom coding which can require a significant amount of resources. Additionally, because communications are in XML, web services are not tied to any operating system or programming language.
Unlike traditional client/server models, web services do not provide an end user with a graphical user interface (GUI). Instead, web services share data and processes through an application interface across a network. These application interfaces are invoked and used to interpret any resulting data.
With the growing market for applications, web services are increasingly popular since it is easy to integrate them into applications to extend the features offered to the end user. Unfortunately, there are limitations on the ability of mobile computing devices to effectively utilize web services integrated into such applications including, for example, with respect to the execution of functionality implemented using JavaScript code.